"You came near increasing the length of my neck by several inches. Why, the fathers and big brothers of some of those girls you wrote to came near lynching me." "Well, I wasn't to blame for that, was I?" "You certainly were. You laid it on too thick." "Not too thick to please the girls, did I?" "Suited some of the girls first rate, but it's bad to write so much. It's apt to come back at you when you least expect it." "What do you care so long as the girls were pleased? You were not courting the father. If you had intended to have the old gentleman read them I could easily have changed the style from a Grade A love to a nice assortment of short business phrases. But, say, Jim, you ought to tell me what happened. Come, now! Any bull's-eyes?" "Do you know that you wrote enough letters to my girls to have married me off a dozen times or more? There are some streets I dare not pass through now--there's that foolish creature in West Thirty-eighth Street, for example." I knew that Jim would leak a little if persistently tapped with interrogations. "What about her? Did we send her many or was she easily won?" I asked. "Hard or soft?" As the middleman it was purely business with me. "That girl was a queer case," said Jim, and he reflected for a moment. "Why, do you know, you had her running to clairvoyants for advice. She didn't think anything of putting up five dollars to learn how it was going to turn out. As soon as I heard that I quit calling and shut you off, for it was either that or get shot, I believed." "That's quite a case, Jim. Let me into all of that, won't you?" "I'm not going to tell you. It's past now, so let it go. You got me into enough trouble to fill a book. The book won't be written, though, for the inside story dies with me." "Come, come, Jim; it's not fair to shut me out from all the excitement and fun after I did all the drudgery. Think how I used to struggle here to keep up my end." "You struggle! Where do you suppose I came in? Still, I'll say no more about it, for I see you are trying to pump me. Let it pass. How do you find the state of the country to-night?" Jim swung from the interesting subject to my hobby, political economy and measures for saving the nation from its impending doom. A man who can't make much headway toward home-building before or after marriage usually becomes a reformer. Men with families take things as they are, if they live at home instead of a club, and find plenty to do. I could not be moved without a protest. "Never mind, Jim," said I. "You may want me to help you out some day and I shall not undertake to handle the case unless it is clearly stated in the contract that I am to be in at the finish." "Agreed; Ben, you are to be there." "Even though you're going to be lynched, don't hesitate to send for me." "That'll probably be the finish, if I give my secrets away to you again. Still, I am past that now." He seemed to doubt his words, however.